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Mohd Sanjeer Alam

Generating socio-economic profiles of electoral constituencies in India has been a long-standing problem. Although efforts have been made in the past by scholars and research agencies, the difficulty is far from being resolved. More often than not, the data on certain socio-economic parameters generated for electoral constituencies have been contested and debunked because of the difficulties and methodological problems facing the exercise of generating such data. A methodology that ensures greater accuracy of estimates of constituency level socio-economic data is attempted here.

West Bengal provides a good context to examine whether the relative size of a minority population is linked to underdevelopment. The association between the size of the Muslim population and deficiency in social and physical infrastructure remains consistent at all levels in the state. No matter what the scale or context, the relative size of the Muslim population is inversely associated with the availability of amenities, a pattern that defies theoretical expectations and calls for further investigation.

Generalisations on the political behaviour of Muslims in India abound though little empirical evidence is offered in support. Two common perceptions are that more of the Muslims vote than any other community, and that they strategically vote en bloc to be able to influence electoral processes and outcomes directly. However, the figures show that nothing is so simple. The Muslim vote in each state is influenced by a complex set of factors that are highly contextual and has to be analysed against this background.

The rise of backward castes to position of power in Bihar has seen a reliance on community-caste mobilisation by the main political actors, aided particularly by "Mandalisation". Former Chief Minister Lalu Prasad pins his hopes in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on using the same means of mobilisation. But with the change in the political choices in the state over time, will Lalu Prasad be able to recover his party's predominant position in the state?

Indian Muslims as a whole lag behind other religious communities in terms of educational attainment. This paper seeks to place Muslim literacy and education as relational and its locatedness in a larger spatial context in order to propose that there can be no one unilinear process in conceptualising religious differences in matters of literacy and education, which might be produced variously through individuals and the larger structures of which individuals are a part.